Vancouver

Read This is a Scout column that details book selections by authorities, luminaries, institutions, and locals that share deep affections for the written word. These titles come our friends at the Emily Carr University Library…

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This month we are offering four selections made by Sadie Olchewski, our Langara College Library Technician Practicum student. During her placement with us, Sadie explored our book collection and found some exciting and fun summer reads!

1 | Destroy All Monsters Magazine / Destroy All Monsters with art work by Niagara, photos by Cary Loren & drawings by Jimmy Shaw (New York : Primary Information, 2011)
“Imagine a group of weirdo artists who also play in a band. Then imagine they made a fanzine. Destroy All Monsters is the visual companion to a band described as psychedelic, heavy metal noise. The magazine (book) is a series of fanzines the band made from the years 1976-1979. It is beautiful. I highly recommend doing a bit of research on this band. The Wikipedia entries for Destroy all Monsters and its members was illuminating. Niagara is the coolest.”

2 | School Spirits / Anya Davidson (New York : PictureBox, 2013)
“This book is about a metal head teenage girl. During class and sometimes when she listens to Hrothgar (her favourite metal band) she is transported into a science fiction-inspired universe. School Spirits is all the awkwardness and the hilarity of being a teenager turned into a science fiction movie with a metal soundtrack.”

3 | Kids in Love / Olivia Bee with an interview by Tavi Gevinson (New York : Aperture, 2016)
“Do you remember the hybrid moments of your teenage years? How you put your friends on a pedestal? I remember thinking there must be some kind of award for fence-jumping and worked hard to appear cool and carefree while doing so. My method of fence jumping did not always work out in my favour and I once found myself hanging from a chain link fence by the pocket of my corduroys. Olivia Bee’s photographs capture these moments in her life as cinematically as you remember your own. I don’t want to say it – but I have to – this book is SO cute!”

4 | The Open Road: Photography & The American Road Trip / David Campany (New York : Aperture, 2014)
“I have always had the dream of going on an epic American road trip. I would drive a beautiful classic car that could somehow travel back in time to old America and back again. The Open Road is that in which the concept of the American road trip is explored honestly and playfully in full colour and black & white. America is pictured as it was, as you’d imagine, and as you could never imagine it from the vantage point of several different photographers. It is a big, beautiful book about road tripping in big, beautiful America.”